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Why everyone hates the IT department

pcpro.co.uk

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Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#71

Post by johngalt »

andrewfelix wrote: post #2

I hate to reinforce stereotypes. But in every Agency I've worked in, most of the IT staff have been under-skilled computer enthusiasts with inflated self worth. This in my opinion is what creates a schism. Many IT staff sell themselves as being much more knowledgeable than they actually are. So when presented with a problem that goes over their head they tend to get defensive and shitty. I've found the nicer the IT s…

Technical skill isn't that important for front line staff. Most IT shops will have a bunch of $10/hr types handling "how do I fix this excel formula?" questions. And they have a phone number for the big guns when they need it. Please don't interrogate people who probably know they are relatively unskilled. It's like talking about weightloss to someone who already knows they are fat.

The $150/hr techs you will rarely see are super nice, and would absolutely love a problem they haven't seen before. Your best bet is to try and shorten the path to them.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#72

Post by andrewfelix »

johngalt wrote: post #71
andrewfelix wrote: post #2

I hate to reinforce stereotypes. But in every Agency I've worked in, most of the IT staff have been under-skilled computer enthusiasts with inflated self worth. This in my opinion is what creates a schism. Many IT staff sell themselves as being much more knowledgeable than they actually are. So when presented with a problem that goes over their head they tend to get defensive and shitty. I've found the nicer the IT s…

Technical skill isn't that important for front line staff. Most IT shops will have a bunch of $10/hr types handling "how do I fix this excel formula?" questions. And they have a phone number for the big guns when they need it. Please don't interrogate people who probably know they are relatively unskilled. It's like talking about weightloss to someone who already knows they are fat. The $150/hr techs you will rarely…

"The $150/hr techs you will rarely see are super nice, and would absolutely love a problem they haven't seen before" This is kind of what I was trying to get at. The guys who know their shit, relish a challenge.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#73

Post by middus »

mkopinsky wrote: post #50
Locke1689 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google is also exceptional because the tech support is for other technical employees. When I went down to a Tech Stop it didn't feel to me like I was "going to see tech support," it felt more like I was going to see another technical employee who happened to do tech support. Then again, I was only an intern so my time there was limited.

I imagine that being tech-support-for-techies, you also end up with interesting issues, rather than "can you put that link back on my desktop" or "my printer's not working again". No self respecting techie will do tier 1 or tier 2 support if he can help it, but in a tech environment it might actually be interesting.

To be honest: I'm a "self-repsecting techie" and I won't spent time on "my printer's not working again" if I can avoid it.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#74

Post by ozgurc »

The people who do not work at IT usually think that we don't do anything, or chatting away all day. Because we are always writing stuff on keyboard whenever they came. We CAN'T be working all that time so we are "chatting"

When they call for their problems while we try our best to help them in a nice fashion but because we don't personally go there and meddle with their computers we become the bad guy.

I think charlie stross's analogy of the IT department with the secret services is correct: when things go correct nobody notices us and when they don't we are the first to be called and blamed for. And has to spend nights to fix it whether it is an user fault or not. What we do is quite black ops to those outside of it, because they are on the end result: their internet connection/software/hardware is working or not.

As an IT guy, I have several projects that has to be finished by xmas and I don't have time to hold hands and/or cry why they are hating us, if they are.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#75

Post by petervandijck »

samirageb wrote: post #70
Bo102010 wrote: post #19

A lot of my problems with IT departments would be solved if the IT folks recognized that people with degrees in computer engineering and computer science tend to be able to take care of their own machines. Also, if they would quit telling me that I can't run VLC because it's not secure, when they have 3 year old versions of the Java Runtime Environment installed on everyone's PC.

CS/CE offer no discernable value to the IT scene, unfortunately. Define 'take care'. Not install spyware knowingly? Ok great. How about making sure that software you install don't conflict with regular updates that are made to all systems every month? Or what about making sure that you're not introducing problems in the areas of authentication or monitoring, by changing specific settings or services that are running…

"Better to go with the devil you know, than the devil you don't." The devil you know. Better for you. Meanwhile I get sabotaged from doing my job well. And my job impacts the bottom line more than yours.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#76

Post by itg »

notatoad wrote: post #59

the simplest reason that everybody hates the IT department is because there's such a huge competency disparity. during the average workday, the people you interact with during the course of your duties will be roughly at the same competency level as you, and you can talk to each other as roughly equals even across vastly different fields. The IT guy, however, could be at the complete opposite end of the spectrum (eit…

he resents you (for good reason)

Disagreed, IT should not be given a pass to resent people just because they don't understand and have as much time and training with computers. Nor do I agree that the IT person will be the smartest person in the room. Everyone has their own set of skills that they are good at. Put the IT guy in sales, if he fails miserably what good are his technical smarts?

If it's the role of the IT department to support users, they should be helpful and courteous, no matter how "stupid" they think of the request. Should I ever have an IT worker who has the stereotypical "better than you attitude", he will be gone in a second.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#77

Post by oz »

mkopinsky wrote: post #53
thought_alarm wrote: post #8

An idea I once had to improve morale within the R&D group was to have some sort of semi-regular contest within the group where the winner would get to fire one IT guy of their choice.

The IT department's morale builder is a contest where the winner gets to pull the network cable from one luser's cube.

Pull network cable? Pfthah! We disable the port at the switch...

  SW1(config)#int Fa0/1
  SW1(config-if)#shutdown
  1w4d: %LINK-5-CHANGED: Interface FastEthernet0/1, changed      state to administratively down
  1w4d: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface   FastEthernet0/1 changed state to down

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#78

Post by samirageb »

petervandijck wrote: post #75
samirageb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CS/CE offer no discernable value to the IT scene, unfortunately. Define 'take care'. Not install spyware knowingly? Ok great. How about making sure that software you install don't conflict with regular updates that are made to all systems every month? Or what about making sure that you're not introducing problems in the areas of authentication or monitoring, by changing specific settings or services that are running…

"Better to go with the devil you know, than the devil you don't." The devil you know. Better for you . Meanwhile I get sabotaged from doing my job well. And my job impacts the bottom line more than yours.

"My job impacts the bottom line more than yours."

That couldn't be further from the truth. If I make mistakes, websites, phone systems, become inaccessible for an unknown duration. That's best case. Worst case, data loss. Depending on the nature of the outage, it could ruin the company.

Try selling to a potential customer when their email domain continues to get bounced, or their voice mails never reach you and you'll find out very quickly who has a greater impact on the organization.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#79

Post by bdunbar »

melling wrote: post #6

They use upgrading to IE9 as an example. However, many companies are still running IE6 and IE7. Windows XP was replaced in 2006 and it's still pervasive on corporate desktops. 16GB of RAM is $100 and it's useless in the average corporate desktop. Sorry, but I think corporate IT departments just try to grow large and be as risk averse as possible.

Growing large and risk averse is what all bureaucratic organizations do.

Using IE6 as an example, in my case at least, for that isn't accurate.

In 2002 I installed a brand-new shiny system to replace our then paper-bound order system. Required IE6.

Fast-forward to 2011 - the version I installed is still in use. IE and Firefox latest work 'ok' for the client, but the administrators must maintain a copy of IE6 [1] for their functions. [2]

We didn't upgrade in 2004 because the costs were prohibitive. We dropped support in 2006 because the cost to support our obsolete version went through the roof, and we were going to implement those functions in JDE 'real soon'.

I stopped supporting the system in 2007, and it went to another team, but we're still using the thing, same version, in 2011. IE6 is still required, of course, for the admin stuff.

All of the decisions that force a handful of people to use IE6 were made above the IT level.

In this case, at least, ain't us man.

[1] Or Safari with UA set to IE 7. [2] It's a shiny pop-up java thing that looked real slick back in 2001.

Re: Why everyone hates the IT department

#80

Post by bdunbar »

oz wrote: post #42
ShardPhoenix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude might be ok for managing the average office worker's machine but when it comes to jobs like programming that are not highly regimented, it's just not good enough. Get out of my way and let me do my job. I'm glad I'm at a company that lets us do whatever we want to our machines (we use a VM for the few things that require IE).

I'm also a programmer, and agree completely - I think devs should have admin rights on their boxes, and at the very least access to VMs for testing Ultimately, it's an issue of trade-offs: I guarantee that since you're allowed to go wild on your machine, the IT cost to support devs is higher. It's not right or wrong, simply a matter of trade-offs. It's up to an individual organization to determine an acceptable trade…

I think devs should have admin rights on their boxes

I no longer support dev desktops, but I do admin the systems they use - servers, databases.

I'm cool with what you say in principle. If we're talking your own desktop, sure, no problem. As long as you're responsible for cleaning up your own mess.

But root on 'my' dev servers - no way, Jose. Those guys don't know unix, don't know what they're doing with root. They get shell accounts, they can do what they need to do.

Maybe it's the way we're setup. Typically 'the' box they're using is shared with other devs and applications. One fubared 'rm' as root and they've taken down great chunks of our development environment.

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